This invention relates to a method for joining corrugated glass plates of borosilicate glass for making heavy-duty packing for mass transfer equipment.
In many modern mass transfer operations such as, for example, distillation, structured packing is employed as a preferred and more efficient replacement for the older simple bulk packing, such as, e.g., Raschig rings. The elements of structured packing consist of obliquely corrugated plates placed in contact with one another in alternatingly oppositely oriented fashion so that open intersecting channels are formed extending obliquely to the column axis (for example, DAS 1,300,511). As a result, a substantial improvement is obtained in the contact between the liquid phase and the vapor phase, and thus in the degree of efficiency of the packing as compared with that of a bulk packing. By offsetting the individual packing bundles with respect to one another by, in each case, 90.degree., a further intermixing of the phases is achieved.
These bundles or packs of packing are comprised of various materials, such as ceramic, stainless steel, other metal alloys, as well as of synthetic resins (e.g., British Patent 1,391,307) or coated and shaped glass fiber structures (e.g., British Patent 1,471,442). Furthermore, packing bundles made of corrugated glass plates are also conventional (DE 3,909,995 C1).
The individual corrugated plates are joined together by sintering in the case of a ceramic and by spot welding in the case of steel. Plates made of synthetic resins, as well as the coated glass fiber fabrics known, for example, from British Patent 1,741,442, are generally glued together. In the heavy-duty pack of corrugated glass plates known from DE 3,909,995, bonding of the individual plates to one another is achieved mechanically, i.e., by means of a strap placed around the corrugated plate pack, or by cementing with an inorganic adhesive or by bonding with the aid of a glass solder.
This heavy-duty pack of corrugated glass plates known from DE 3,909,995 C1 exhibits, however, still certain drawbacks under practical conditions. In the case of the corrugated glass plates held together by a strap, the individual corrugated glass plates must first be cut to the size of the inside correspondence diameter of the column; then they must be carefully assembled so that the strap can be wrapped around the assembly. The cutting to size of the individual corrugated glass plates is labor-intensive and costly. In the cemented or soldered corrugated glass plates, the glass adhesive or the glass solder must always be positioned precisely at the points of the intersection of the individual corrugations of the various corrugated glass plates, which is a technically complicated step which likewise leads to additional costs.